Soho Book Dirty White Boy set for West End stage - Internet diaries of Clay Littlewood ready for run at Trafalgar Studios

Published: 23 April 2010
by DEMIAN SMITH

SEX shops, brothels, bag ladies, drag queens, gangsters, transsexuals and a touching and true love story – just a day in the life of a Soho shopkeeper.

The internet diaries of Clay Littlewood – adapted into the acclaimed Dirty White Boy book last year – has undergone a second transformation, this time for the West End stage.

Mr Littlewood will star in his own show, Dirty White Boy – Tales of Soho, in a four-week run at Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall.

The play gets its name from the racy clothes shop where he worked and wrote his blog.

Mr Littlewood said: “The whole thing happened accidentally. Gradually, as people came into the shop, more and more you got to follow their lives. 

It was when it was picked up and made into a book that the whole thing got bigger and bigger, naturally.”

Actor David Benson plays several characters in the play includding a madam, a transsexual, an East End hardman and the biggest queen in Soho.

He said: “All I can do is hope the characters come through. The charm of Dirty White Boy is that people can relate to it – it’s an act of imagination and interpretation.” 

The show opens on Monday.